Ink Through Water
by Q u e e n V a m p
Summary: —Kol doesn't react well to Jeremy's death. Kol/Jeremy.
1. dies in a whisper

**Title| **Ink Through Water

**Genre| **hurt/comfort/angst

**Rating|** t

**Fandom| **the Vampire Diaries

**Couple| **jeremy/kol, caroline/klaus, damon/elena

**N/A| **okay, haters will hate and forget you all because I actually like this pairing so read it, don't read it. If you flame it, it only brings up my review count so think about that. No skin off my teeth.

**N/A| **Otherwise enjoy. :3

* * *

_"I'm just a normal boy who sank when I fell overboard—_

_My ship would leave the country, but I'd rather swim ashore,"_

—"Into the Ocean" by Blue October

* * *

"Kol?" Caroline's voice is soft over the phone, barely above a whisper and it still manages to shake him to his bones. He smiles at the thought of the blonde vampire his brother had taken a fancy to sounding scared of anything. She was a baby vampire, delicate looking but iron-laced. She was beautiful, strong, the very stuff of light—Klaus's words, not his—and a lot more tolerable than her 'better half' on any day that ends with a _y_.

"Caroline, darling, what do I owe the pleasure—it's nearly noon, Niklaus has been looking for you." He teases lightly and expects for her to scoff and say she doesn't need to be with him _every second of the day_.

"I called him already . . ." she says edgily and he hears shuffling over the line and—he presses the phone closer to his ear—crying? "Elena and Stefan are back from the island," she says and Kol's mind instantly wonders back to Jeremy—wonderful, Hunter, buddy-buddy Jeremy—he really needs to stop by later and break his sternum for not calling him. Seriously, he may have been daggered for the last hundred years, but he's pretty sure he remembers how courtship works. You don't just leave without telling someone.

"Well, when's the funeral?" he jokes.

Caroline's quiet for a few long moments and dread begins to twist in his gut.

"Caroline—?"

"Kol—it's Jeremy . . ."

The cellphone crushes in his hand.

* * *

Kol stares down at the body on Jeremy's bed wrapped in a pale blue, baby blanket—Jeremy's baby blanket. He remembers teasing him for it on numerous occasions, but he had liked it. It had been a gift from Jeremy's deceased aunt to celebrate his birth. He liked running his fingers over the frayed edges and helter-skelter stitching and smelling the entwined scents of detergent, Jeremy, and him.

That stupid ratty blanket smelling like him was enough to let him know he had fallen for the human like window washer's falls off a one-hundred foot skyscraper. The first ninety-nine floors are fun, but the last one brings him down. You crumble, fall, and can't walk away. It was his one weakness.

And now it reeks of death.

He barely remembers the drive here, but Caroline had opened the door for him when Stefan was making a call and he followed his nose to the bedroom.

"What are you doing here?" His eyes slide from the bed over to the bathroom adjoining Elena and Jeremy's rooms, finding aforementioned doppelgänger and the doctor woman who cheated the death of others with vampire blood.

It takes him a moment realize the Elena is angry. True, she had never approved of their relationship—like he cared—but the simple fact that the doppelgänger had the nerve to pick a fight with him _now _should say something about her sanity.

"Who let _you _in?" she hisses.

"Caroline," he says with the same frosty tone, and turns to face her. "I hope you don't mind, but I was a tad thrown when I smelled _a dead body _in the house." He says harshly and watches the doctor wince. "Even more so, it seems that you're unfailing holier-than-thou, golden vagina complex has kept you from meeting a tragic end once again—for the sake of humanity you don't even want—and look! You're idiocy has claimed yet another victim—dear Jeremy, love of my twenty-first century."

His voice if dripping with venom at the end and the doctor is backing away. Elena's expression, however, morphs from anger to confusion slowly.

"Kol," she says like he's wringing the air from her lungs. "He got hurt on the island, but he was wearing his ring—h-he's gonna be okay."

_Alright, bitch is delusional._

"He was part of the Five!" Kol exclaims. "That Hunter ring would not have worked!"

It's a fact he knows and has accepted.

"No, no—you're lying. Jeremy isn't—Jeremy couldn't be—"

But he is.

He knocks away Elena and Meredith like flies and they collide against the hard plaster of the walls, crying out in pain. Kol barely hears them and sizes up against Elena's fingers curling into a choke around her neck and slamming her back into the wall, chipping off plaster.

"No. He's dead. _You _killed him. I just want to know how so I can make it a thousand times more painful." His nails curl into her neck and she screams for help.

"He's not—he's not—how can you say that?" Elena hiccups and Kol applies more pressure to her neck, cutting off the ramble of nonsense spilling out of her mouth. He can hear her lungs beginning to spasm, trying to catch air, but Kol wouldn't allow her that.

"Kol!" Caroline and Stefan come barging into the room, taking in the damage with round eyes.

"Start talking—now!"

* * *

Caroline and Stefan spell it out for him in black and white. They were on the island, Jeremy was with Bonnie, they found the cure, something went wrong, Katherine showed up (that _bitch _is now at the _top _of his shit list . . . right behind Elena) and now Jeremy is dead.

Plain. Simple. _Neither._

He's staring at the bed in astonishment, eyes tracing over Jeremy's pale waxen features and slowly decaying human body.

It's enough to make you want to cry isn't it?

* * *

They left him alone in Jeremy's room.

"When you're ready," Caroline whispers to his ear and gently lays a hand on his shoulder. He shrugs her off and waits for the door to click shut and the music from downstairs cranks up a notch. It's soft rock music, like the kind they play at the Grille.

Kol closes his eyes and reaches out, presses his fingertips to Jeremy's forehead and trying to find a way into his mind. There's nothing inside, just organs and stilled blood and that horrid smell. He gets a nostril full and wants to recoil, but when he sees Jeremy's face again, he stops.

_I wonder if we were getting back together, _he wonders to himself, remembering their last conversation—debating emo bands and the differences between the Beatles and One Direction. They hadn't really talked about anything too important, it was just another was of their inane chats about whatever came up, like they always did.

"I think my brother ships Stefan and Elena together," Kol mutters into his whiskey glass and Jeremy makes a face. "Personally, I think that's way too much self-sacrifice and hair in one relationship."

"But Stefan's better than Damon any day." Jeremy points out and Kol shrugs.

"You know what? I think your sister should become a nun, save us all the trouble. She could wear the dress, though we _all _know she's not a virgin—" Jeremy claps his hands over his ears.

"We are _not _discussing my sister's sex life!"

"—I think they'd still take her. Think about it, then everyone can stop worrying about who she's sleeping with and we can focus on something different for a change."

"Like what?" Jeremy asks, realization dawning over his face.

"Like who you're sleeping with," Kol says casually and watches the brunette across from him go scarlet. He enjoys watching him struggle to answer, but Kol stands and kisses him sloppily on the ear before making his grand exit.

"Hey! I need to talk to you!" Jeremy shouts and Kol hears his chair scrap back, about to give chance.

"Wait before you tell me the answer!" he shouts back and darts into the streets because he's faster.

_What did you want to say? _He wonders.

* * *

_Jeremy, _he wants to mourn, but remains stronger than that. _See ya in the next life, mate._

* * *

Kol is beginning to question the doppelgänger's sanity, but in the upmost respect he agreed. This house was an ugly reminder of much too many things.

Burn down the house—make the flames surge high and burn down everything, every last lingering detail and the memories collecting in the corner, ready for the slaughter. He'd even get the matches and throw them if the Gilbert girl was too damaged to do it herself.

(—Lighter fluid slashes over his Italian shoes and he hisses a warning—)

Burn the house down. Burn the porch where him and Jeremy had many conversations (and many pizza men compelled), burn the couch where they played video games together, burn the bedroom where they'd slept together, burn every wall until the paint peeled back and couldn't remember the place Kol pushed him against.

(—Lighter fluid spills unceremoniously onto Jeremy's body—)

Burn his body from oblivion and leave no grave to guilt him into visiting.

Burn every last—

The lighter fluid splashes over the sketches Jeremy had left laying out on the wooden coffee table, smudged, half-shaded, surrounded by charcoal and pencils. It had been a masterpiece he was taking extra care to finish, just by the assort of utensils Kol could tell he'd been really trying to get the lines right.

Kol—who never sat still for too long—had secretly liked watching Jeremy sketch. The way his eyebrows creased and his eyes would squint as he worked, how he would turn the paper or his head for a better angle—leaving his neck exposed and getting so lost in his own world Kol wouldn't have been able to follow him if he tried.

Those were happy memories.

Denver days and Grille afternoons.

Kol felt a pang when he realizes that he wanted those sketches, the work Jeremy had poured his soul into—nightmares, coffee mugs, him and anything that cross though his mind. Things _Jeremy _made. Things _Jeremy _thought of. The very last living pieces of him.

Suddenly, he thinks the doppelgänger is using a little too much lighter fluid on the table.

"Bitch!" he barks, launching himself at her he hears no resistance behind him for his efforts and his fingers lock in a vice around the baby vampire's neck, gripping and forcing her to drop the match to the ground in mid-hysteria.

It's unlit, safe, alright.

Damon's eyes widen and he moves to lunge. "Don't!" He shouts, turning Elena in his hold, wringing her neck in his grip, his fingers pressing sharply into her back, digging in through the cotton long sleeves she seemed to own in abundance. He drew a careful amount of blood for warning. "Come any closer—I'll rip her spine out."

He watches Damn and Stefan—the idiots—come to a jarring halt in mid-step. Caroline hasn't even moved.

"Caroline could you be a dear and collect Jeremy's sketches, please?" he says prettily. "No lighter fluid if you could and try not to smudge the coal—I had it imported."

Okay, so maybe he had tried to buy Jeremy at one point, but he could give a fuck less if Damon and Stefan knew that.

Caroline takes a careful breath, eyes darting to Stefan's hesitant look and Damon's outright glare—her neutral party status was none too appreciated during any conflict—and she nods. Kol watches her collect the books and pictures and take them into the kitchen before his eyes flicker back to the Salvatore's. Elena whimpers mournfully and Damon's eyes darken.

"Kol—" Stefan says slowly, palms facing toward him in surrender—_lies for slander!—_and Kol sneers at him. "You don't have to—"

"Oh, I do—I so want to—but I won't. I just want the sketches, and this little bitch," His nails dig in sharply and Elena yips in pain like a kicked dog. "Isn't going to take that away from me."

"Please, don't, please!" His captive cries and Kol nearly wanted to rip her spine out then and there for simply breathing. _No, _he coaches himself silently. _Not yet, not yet. Get the books. Then rip. One, two. One, two. One, two, two, two._

Damon's eyes narrow on him.

"What?" he spat.

His mouth opens to speak, but whatever he is going to say—for _poor _Elena's sake—he thought better of it and stays silent.

Caroline reenters the room a few minutes later, the books bundled up but smelling faintly of chemicals and water—it couldn't be helped. The moleskin holds onto anything. "It stinks, I know, but this is as much as I could get without ruining anything."

Nervous rambling, he could forgive only Caroline for—to an extent.

Caroline slides the books into a backpack she must have grabbed from somewhere in the house and tosses it to him, seeming to understand that behind the couch, beside Jeremy's body, is the safest place to be right now.

In the same instant that the backpack is in the air, Damon lunges forward, grabbing Elena from his arms and hauling her halfway across the room.

The backpack lands in the corner by a plant.

Snarling in outrage, Kol's muscles tense, ready to lunge when Stefan knocks into him, clipping his head off the fireplace mantle, he howls in pain. In retaliation, he takes the fire poker and plunges it into the Salvatore's spleen.

Caroline then jumps in—for the heels she wears, she moves fast—and he suddenly feels the urge to roll his eyes. And yanks the fire poker from Stefan, and raising it like a spear.

"Caroline, darling, I like you. My brother loves you—but if you _don't move, __**now **_I will kill you."

Caroline's eyes are narrow and he can tell she doesn't believe him. She been on the Good Side too long and not with his family enough. Mikaelson's always keep their word.

"Kol, Jeremy wouldn't—"

"Jeremy's dead." He says indifferently but the words are tearing at his ears and driving needles into his skin. "A corpse can't want for anything."

"Well, if he means so little to you," a voice calls from behind him and a sound echoes in his ears, a faint scratch and smell of new flame. "Then you wouldn't mind if I—?"

"Stefan!" Caroline cries.

The youngest Salvatore is holding a match over the open mouth of the backpack, dripping and newly bathed in lighter fluid. He's still on the ground, but is even more of a threat than anyone else in the room right now.

"Put the backpack down."

"Leave," Stefan says.

"Just keep them then."

"Stefan—don't you dare." Caroline growls nearly feral.

"No. What means more to you, Kol? Jeremy's pictures or revenge against the person who didn't even kill him?" Stefan says hollowly, reminding him of why his brother thought Stefan was full of untapped potential. He could turn off his emotions without turning them off. He could torture and do what was needed to get the job done. "She's hurting, too."

_So is he, _Kol notes that Stefan is still bleeding a river from his torso and is now snapping comments back at Caroline—along with Damon—and Elena is wailing in the corner. _He's a clear shot._

By default—when he lunges—Stefan drops the match and everything remaining of Jeremy goes up in flames.

* * *

**I can't write for Kol—or at least not fully in character, very, very well because we haven't seen Kol in love, but we know he'll take revenege when he needs to. And I'll write something to explain how I feel Klaus and Caroline should be together without sacrificing too much of their personalities.**

**Like to stay away from OOC *puts on sunglasses* and let the games begin.**

**Two reviews and next update,**

**—QueenVamp**


	2. silence for a moment

**Title| **Ink Through Water

**Genre| **hurt/comfort/angst

**Rating|** t

**Fandom| **the Vampire Diaries

**Couple| **jeremy/kol, caroline/klaus, damon/elena

**N/A| **not much, but we skip ahead a few hours after Kol freaks out and he talks to Caroline.

* * *

_"Well make sure to build your house brick by boring brick _

_or the wolf's gonna blow it down—"_

—"Bury the Castle" by Paramore

* * *

He's at a bar halfway out of town with three unconscious humans surrounding him and a compelled bartender sending drinks to the underage couple sitting down the bar from him—the two fifteen year olds winked with too much glitter make-up and Kol had already thrice sent them away. He didn't have any patience for humans tonight but he wanted to surround himself with heartbeats to drown out his thoughts. Hearts that beat and that pushed blood through veins and sung songs around him, all at once, but none of them match Jeremy's unique tempo.

He wouldn't let himself feel like this, but he hardly felt opt to going out slaughtering—yet. Maybe later. He had to be drunk enough to stand screaming pedestrians first. Otherwise it was just no fun.

Caroline appears behind him leaning against the bar, thin and waiflike, her blonde hair illuminated like a halo from the dim lights. She smells like his brother. It was as if the constant presence of the hybrid clung to her clothes and hair similar to a perfume. He could imagine them in his head, having a lovely quiet moment that belonged to them and them only; Klaus would press his face into her hair and inhale her smell like he could carry a part of her around with him all day and Caroline would make a comment, and they'd hold each other like lovers would and breathe as one.

Him and Jeremy were like that once, once upon a time.

Caroline glances at the unconscious humans, listening for their pulses and inaudibly sighs, thankful that they're alive, before she has the balls to wave away his drink and ask from something watered down and a glass for herself. He'd have to knock her down a peg . . . someday. She shifts her bag on her shoulder and remains standing as if she would stop him if he did try to run.

"Kol," Caroline says and her voice isn't right. She never sounded weak when she talked to him because Caroline is strength, resilience and iron-laced beauty. She's a queen who knows the importance of keeping a face, but not too much so that she can't lose herself to rage every now and again. Kol has, admittedly, always liked that about her. And even when she's being annoying and trying to make everything right, he vowed to give her his ear for a while.

She stepped closer and he caught a new scent—blood. Just beneath her fingernails.

He stares blankly at her with a bland expression. "What do you want Caroline?" he asks tartly and Caroline doesn't flinch. "Wait. Better question: what did you _do_?" He quirks a brow and a smile, eyes shifting over her bloody manicure and tries to categorize who it belongs to.

The bartender returns with their drinks and Kol sips at it, grudgingly, and Caroline doesn't touch hers. "Elena's lost it," she says quietly, her voice is mournful and dry, like she's eaten mouthful of cotton. "She's turned her humanity."

"Well, that's unfortunate. She might actually be sufferable now—shame she has to die." He swirls the glass in his hand, watching the ice make a ring around the glass, faster and faster. "You know, some people just shouldn't be vampires. They really do bring the rest of us down." He smiles cat-like, all teeth and gleaming eyes. "What did you do to her?"

Caroline shakes her head and the scent of blood and sweat and Klaus wafts through the air again and attacking his senses. She ignores his question, "I don't think being a neutral party in Mystic Falls will work anymore. Damon's being an ass, Stefan's _not_ thinking and Bonnie's gone completely _psycho_." He can hear the stain in her voice, pulling taunt and thin like a rubber band, she's close to breaking or already has. Kol tenses. For the little love he offers his brother and his mate, he will _not _deal with a neurotic and broken Caroline.

Unless she wanted to drink away everything—then he would deal with her.

"You're point?" He says carefully, weighing whether it was time for flight or not. Caroline's eyes meet his. They're like ice slipping into his skin.

"I'm done here. I'm tired of everyone looking at me like I'm a time bomb because of how I feel about your brother and forgetting that I'm a person too," she hisses lowly. "I hate to be the bitch here, but if I have to be I will be."

"Did you kill Elena?" Kol asks and the silence between them is heavy.

"No, Kol. I didn't kill her and neither will you." Caroline says, composing herself and crossing her arms over her chest.

Kol raises a brow. "And why wouldn't I?"

"It's not her fault and Kol and you _know _that."

"How can you be so sure? Neither of us were on that island Caroline!"

"But you know that no one who loved Jeremy that much would be able to kill him." She snaps back and Kol is shocked into silence for a moment—contemplating on how angry his brother might be if he broke Caroline's neck. He deduced that Caroline might not even tell him, or he'd be daggered and awake in a time where things are more hellish than they are now. But Klaus wouldn't kill him—that he knew better than anyone. He cared too much and Caroline, oddly enough, would be upset.

He didn't want to hurt Caroline.

He just didn't want to feel this way anymore.

He didn't want to be in love with someone dead—the real kind of dead—and who was never coming back.

"Here, I got you these." Caroline says, her voice taking up a calm and nurturing tone, sort of like how his mother used to be. She rolls a backpack off her shoulder and presents it to him unceremoniously. The contents of the bag smell like gasoline and moleskin.

His eyes widen. "What?"

"Jeremy's other sketchbooks. I think these are the ones from Denver; he had them under his bed. Don't worry, I didn't look."

"I wouldn't have cared if you did." Kol says trying to sound blasé and uninterested, but Caroline raises a brow.

"They were _under _his _bed._"

"Nothing to be ashamed of."

"Riiight," Caroline rolls her eyes and kneels down to him, placing the bag at his feet. "I won't think any less of you for taking them. I know you want them and you can keep them. No one else could take better care of them," She pauses taking an unamused expression. "Jeremy knew you better than anyone didn't he?"

"Yes, he did,"

"And you won't talk to anyone but Jeremy?"

"Nope,"

"Then there's nothing left for us here," Caroline says, fixing her blouse and superior expression. "I'm taking your brother up on touring Europe—Rebekah might come along too." The invitation lays open in the air, and he bats it away with a wave of his glass.

"I do better on my own."

Caroline reaches for her glass and downs it in one throw.

"Suit yourself, stay in touch, kay?" She kisses his forehead and removes the glass tumbler from his grasp, much to his complaint, and sets it down at the edge of the table away from him. And he'll let her think she made a difference for now, he catches her sleeve.

"One last question—who's blood?"

Caroline holds up her hands to the lamp, inspecting her manicure sorrowfully and looks back to Kol and wiggles her fingers at him. "Damon's, I was just giving him what was coming to him." She takes a few dance-like steps backward and turns, calling over her shoulder. "If you want to know how, meet up with us in Paris."

* * *

**This will be my story where I get all my anger on Elena out. Because I need to. Pent up rage, two jobs and fighting with friends is a very bad combination. In addition I have a caffine addiction and I just watched the final season of _Sherlock. _I love those writers so much. AMazing, beautiful, stunning. Every frame, everything.**

**More to come~**

**Two reviews and next update,**

**—QueenVamp**


	3. roaring through the ages

**Title| **Ink Through Water

**Genre| **hurt/comfort/angst

**Rating|** t

**Fandom| **the Vampire Diaries

**Couple| **jeremy/kol, caroline/klaus, damon/elena

**N/A: Question : I'm not adding this in the story, but the Originals, when we write them: why this fear of love? It's a question I'm asking everyone. No Kol will not have some great background, that is reserved for a different story. Kol will ask himself this question, but dive in.**

* * *

_"I really miss your hair in my face  
and the way your innocence taste  
and I think you should know this  
you deserve much better than me."_

___—_"Better Than Me" byHinder

* * *

Fingers interlocked, lips on lips, silence around them.

He loved the moments where it felt like they were eclipsed from the rest of the world, when they were lying in bed together in an empty house and no one was around to question or to say anything—that way he could be sane, for Jeremy, for a moment, for this alternate universe parallel to the one they lived in—vampire in a Hunter's bed. Contrary to popular belief and social media, it didn't happen quite often; and it brought about the raised eyebrows and looks when both partners were male.

He didn't care, Jeremy didn't care, but _they—_Elena, Stefan, Elijah, Bonnie—cared and for that they were stepping on toes as much as possible to assist in breaking them up, even if the results were miserable.

The only difference was that Elijah knew Kol could handle himself in affairs of the heart—though if he meant ripping or the metaphorical one, he never elaborated—but he was worried on what Kol would do to Jeremy if they ever fought.

But Kol would never kill Jeremy, he was too much fun.

* * *

Kol flips the page in the sketch book and wants to roll his eyes. First page, Jeremy's hand infatuation. Ranging from feminine dainty fingers to boxy workmen hands, Jeremy had drawn them all. Sharpening charcoal, shading, and coloring, lines thick and thin; they were his pride and joy for the longest time. Then hands wearing rings—Caroline's manicures and silver with blue daylight stone, Damon's tan and gaudy family ring, Alaric's scarred palms and polished ring—he kept flipping until a date caught his eye. Dangerously close to Denver, a few months before Elena showed up, his hands were sprawled across the page languidly, fingers like spider legs poised and thin.

Jeremy had drawn Kol with vigor; his fingers gripping a baseball bats, knuckles freckled by the sun, fingers tracing shapes over invisible things, the enticing veins of his wrist, his ring was a non-central of his hands feature because Jeremy recognized the rings and it didn't matter to him.

(_"Hi, my name's Jeremy."_

_"Kol."_

_"Cole." A nod. _

_"With a _k _and no _e_."_

_"Cool." A smile. _

_"Thanks."_)

He turns a few more pages and stares at the profiles Jeremy had drawn—teachers, friends, Max, randoms—but on every other flint of the page there was an angle of the nose, square of the jaw, curl of the hair where Jeremy had started on Kol, but stopped himself ashamed. He never scribbled them out though. Three pages later—equivalent of a week from withdraw—there was a full-on shaded, colored, detailed to the dimple, sketch of Kol masterfully created in the course of hours and a six pack of Coke. Kol should know, he posed for it.

(_"What? Draw you like my French girls, or something?"_

_"What?"_

_"What?"_

_". . ."_

_"You were deprived as a child, I can tell. You have a sister, right?"_)

And it wasn't the first time he slept with someone who painted him well in a parody of a thank you, but Jeremy never needed to know that. Michelangelo never meant as much to him as Jeremy had and he had half the talent.

He stayed and that alone made him question everything—warning himself not to fall, laughing cause he wouldn't, mourning because he was—and he really didn't care and he continued posing for Jeremy's artistic temperaments though not many of them had made it to paper. Kol's torso, arms, and legs were drawn across the pages—sometimes connecting, sometimes not—always tangling with an invisible lover whom Jeremy never drew for him.

Kol sips at his drink and clinks his teeth to the edge of the glass, head too full of thought.

(_"Lay back like . . . yeah, just a bit more—good. What? Not comfy? I could get you another pillow . . ." Kol pulls Jeremy down on top of him and flips him under him, straddling his waist with his thighs and leaning down like a predator over its defenseless prey. Jeremy's eyes are blown wide, a phantom smile on his lips._

_It was striking to Kol, more so than ever, on how fragile Jeremy seemed in his hands—unlike any other human—and he still pressed the length of his body against Kol's and opened himself up to pain and harsh kisses and broken blood vessels creating constellations against his neck. _

_Sensing his hesitation, Jeremy leans up on his elbows and bending his neck out of view and shushing to the vampire above him and bringing their lips together. He remembers feels rage, for the first time in a while, Jeremy's neck cut off to him, what he wanted most—but only for a few moments. Jeremy's charcoal smudged fingers leaving prints of their own across the back of Kol's neck and thighs._)

He bit Jeremy the same night he drew those because it was too much—_he tells himself too much affection when really he was trying to show affection back_—and endured a half-an-hour that could have been put to better use, dodging projectiles and enraged screams about trust, and never wanting to see him again and the norm.

(_"Why did you let me so close, if you knew who I was?"_

_His heartbeat skitters like a rabbit in a trap, scrambling to get free. Blood attacks the fragile layer beneath Jeremy's skin and makes his face red and blotchy. Kol sucks in a breath. _

_"Don't ask me things! You have no right!" They tangle in limbs and Kol is much stronger and holds Jeremy down and stares into his eyes as Jeremy keeps his closed._

_"Look-look at me," he says, his tone is grave and tastes like ash in his mouth and he bears down with his fangs for the familiar feeling of teeth ripping through his gums, bleeding them a little. Jeremy's eyes are wide and centered in on Kol's mouth. "This is what I am, this is my nature—and I heard your heart beat." _

_He talks and talks and goes on and on and tries to make sense of the things tangled in his stomach and trying not to say too much and say not too little. Jeremy is wide-eyed, confused and his heart is a drum thudding against his breast bone as Kol's fingers make idle trails across his chest and neck. Jeremy smacks his hands away, face burning in rage again. Kol thinks that makes him all the more fun._)

If Kol had not already dominated the pages of the moleskin books, he did now. Distance does make the heart grow fonder and Jeremy's human heart was no different by comparison. His hands, his arms, his legs, his neck, his body, his face, his nose, his eyes, his mouth—his mouth was the feature Jeremy put the most effort into and near the binding he could see the telltale of ripped pages and smudged charcoal by fingers. Evidence of a boy in love with something he shouldn't.

But Kol didn't leave him alone for too long.

(_"Good morning, Jeremy."_

_"Piss off."_

_"Well, someone certainly did in your Cheerios this morning."_

_"Go away Kol."_)

It was just a tad harder to get Jeremy on track with the _yes, I'm a vampire _and _I'm sort of not sorry I bit you during sex _thing. But like all problems, therapy was a true help and some melodramatic yammering on Jeremy's side about compelling the school counselor and how it was _wrong _and _just plain weird, _Kol shares his growing knowledge of Dr. Phil.

It was the first time he had seen Jeremy smile in weeks, off-handedly adorable, sun in his hair, light in his eyes and he shook his head and let out a short laugh.

Kol will admit to no one that he sort of—kind of—not really—sure, whatever—no—maybe—liked—hated—amazed—disliked—love d—_no_—tolerated Jeremy Gilbert.

* * *

There was a recess in sketches and more of outlines for comic books featuring Kol as the dark and sexy anti-hero and the city of Denver as his playground after being locked in a tomb for a hundred years. The storyline was good enough—retold versions of him and Jeremy's nights on the town and seeing movies and exploring the city—and Jeremy was a foreground character with witty comebacks and perfect lines while sometimes he drew Kol like he could give a fuck less about him and made him look comically cartoonish portals when watching _Titanic, Twilight, _and a bunch of other movies and his loud exclamations that made their way into a montage of them just hanging out and not saying much.

They reached a stalemate on one boring Sunday afternoon. Jeremy's hand had been posed over the sketchbook for almost an hour with ideas running through his mind and not sure how to begin. Kol was leaning over his shoulder and watching the tense line of his shoulders and where his neck was bared for him. He inhaled Jeremy's uncertainty and confusion before whispering, "What about a hot yaoi scene?"

He remembers pressing Jeremy back against the chair and attacking his mouth, with fingers twisting in his hair and the material of his shirt, growing urgency pulling them closer and closer together like magnets that _snap _connected and never let go. Kol enjoys kissing him breathless and running his human teeth down the column of Jeremy's throat before he was pushed off and Jeremy retreated back to his bedroom to sulk.

(_"You liked it and you know it!"_

_"You're going to have to come out sometime!"_

_"I'm coming in!"_)

Jeremy missed _a lot _of school that semester hiding in his room from Kol.

* * *

Elena was like a wedge between them even when they could reach around it. Jeremy loved his sister, Kol hated her. And Damon. Jeremy hated Damon, but he meant something to Elena and, therefore, Jeremy did not want him dead either. Kol had not yet leant the schematics of these wire thin alliances, so when he broke a wooden bat over Damon's head for a) showing up, b) talking, c) showing up in Denver and talking to Jeremy—he wasn't expecting Jeremy to be pissed as hell after he was the one with the aforementioned broken bat shoved into his chest.

But that's life and whatever and shit.

He finally got to stalk Jeremy around his hometown and into school now.

* * *

His brother was having trouble with a blonde baby vampire with pretty blue eyes and sharp fangs. He was besotted wholly, mystified by her the way she walked and talked and did not care when he tried to bring the world crashing around her. Kol liked her too, admittedly. Klaus threatened to tear out his liver and make him eat it.

She was friends with the doppelganger and Jeremy, drawing a fine line that needed to be made between the two warring parties. She was diplomatic—_"Luck of the draw," _she often said and rolled her eyes, so Klaus wouldn't see them soften when he made a gesture of peace between them—and he saw her around the mansion a lot, lounging around, eating their food, watching their TV, like a normal seventeen year old and he saw her at school while he was visiting—stalking—Jeremy. She was a leader, a force to be reckoned with and kept her hybrid boyfriend in line all while managing her 3.0—whatever that meant.

When he caught her with Klaus, compromising but innocent nonetheless, she didn't waver when he threatened to tell Tyler if she didn't help him. Instead she smiled, small and slow, a lazy draw over her teeth and nipping into the rose hue of her cheeks. "You want me to talk to Jeremy, don't you?"

This was worth the dislocated shoulder and the blonde's peals of laughter as she stood, unharmed, with his brother standing tall and looking very grave beside her.

Caroline's head inclined towards him, the bright shade of her hair and fair skin alone seeming to make Klaus lighter when he should look darker. She made him lighter—and he'd hide it forever, from anyone but Caroline, from anyone _especially _Caroline. "Don't touch him. He didn't do anything." Klaus looks flabbergasted and ready to parry with a witty retort, but the malice is cleared from her voice, a blatant steel sheet, and he silently watches her.

He meets Caroline later and they discuss battle plans and, on the side, some Denver-details Caroline wanted and squealed over excitedly like a three-year-old and grins. He wonders who the mentally instable on in this town until Caroline says, glass tumbler in her manicured hand:

"You know, Jeremy's dealt with a lot—a lot, a lot. First there was puberty—don't get me started, but I have pictures—and then Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert died and he was such a little terror. Of course, he was on drugs before that, but then it seemed like a _binge _he hung out with Vickie Donovan—" she pauses before and after she says that name, looking up and down the bar. "—and when she got turned he really lost it after that. On and off record, he did try for suicide a few times; one by vampirism, but that was a little after Anna. And then there was the compelling and him finding out about it. And then there was Jenna . . ." she pauses again and her eyes shone with the name, and something ugly like black tarry guilt rolls into the abyss of blue in her eyes. "It's a lot for someone—hell—anyone to take. I don't fully approve," she shrugs. "And I know you're not going to spill your heart out to me now like we're best friends forever, though I'd really like it if you would, I think this is all up to you and Jeremy. We can't really stop the way Elena looks at Damon either."

"Don't compare us to them."

"Sure, just don't hurt him." She says this with an even prim tone of authority that she uses on the freshmeat at their school, allied with the icy looks and imposing heels, but here her eyes are soft and her demeanor is relaxed by a third glass of bourbon, but it has the same affect.

* * *

The party did start classy but was as quickly the well-dressed teens of Mystic Falls started to lose a few layers at the lock in all-nighter, wine bottles are being passed around and the walls are vibrating with the music. Finn's standing outside with a cigarette and compelling the deputies to go home every time they showed up. Caroline spinning through the crowd in a little red number and laughing with a blonde boy he'd seen with Jeremy. Klaus and Rebekah are both glaring and prattling back and forth with plans to separate them; Kol slinks in before they can. "Why is this necessary again?"

Caroline grins and fixed Kol's hair with her fingers, handing Matt her drink. "Because big gatherings are much more intimate," she says and glances over his shoulder, meeting Klaus's heated stare and raising her eyebrows a little, a gesture almost Damon-like in comparison. "Okay. Jeremy's drinking, not drunk but drinking, I'll work on distraction." She takes her drink from Matt—who rolls his eyes and makes a _please kill me but not really _face—and strides over to Elena—his siblings watching them with their eyes, curious, when Caroline launches into a drunken tirade of Elena deliberately going after every guy she likes/liked.

Kol watches for a few minutes, eyebrows rising when Caroline finger poked Elena's shoulder and she relives the details of her time with Damon.

* * *

"Hey, jailbait," Kol drops to Jeremy's ear. The brunette is nursing a second glass of scotch, already half-empty. Kol's hold two translucent sparkly wine in delicate crystal flutes. "Got you a drink?"

"What do you want?"

"It's my party," Kol hands Jeremy the flute and takes the scotch and dumps in into a potted plant nearby. "And that's my scotch, and my plant, and possibly my shirt." Kol eyes the tee shirt Jeremy's wearing and smiles. "Toast?"

They do.

"So, how are you?"

"What do you want?"

"Can I not make conversation?"

"What do you want, Kol?" Jeremy asks through his teeth, eyes narrowed and shining and so dark Kol could just see the pupil downing in the iris of them. Kol curls his fingers around Jeremy's knuckles and watches those eyes and ignores Jeremy's protest. His fingers lock gently around his wrist, feeling where his skin is still smooth and merges in with the callous.

Well, no one ever said Kol Mikaelson was too shy to get down to business.

"I want to kiss you," He presses his lips to a knuckle. "I want to kiss you and sleep with you and drink from you and bite you—in all the ways I know you like, in all the ways I know you fear. I want to be near you, I want you in my bed, and I want to hold you down with just my stare alone. I want you to want me," Jeremy makes a pained noise. "I want you to try and make me moan again. I want you to hold me down and say those things you used to say. I want you and I don't have to give you my reasons why, but I will write out what I want _in blood_," Kol presses Jeremy's wrist to his lips and feels the pleasant rush of blush coursing its way through his veins at an accelerated pace. "Whether it be mine, yours, or someone else's is entirely your choice, darling."

Jeremy glares, doesn't pull his wrist away, but glares hatefully into Kol's eyes—several shades lighter than his own. His full mouth pulls taunt. "You make me sick."

Kol's brow quirks. "And you want me too."

"No," Jeremy says and leans forward, just a little, just a hair more, making their bodies only a breath between each other's. His eyes focus. "I hate you."

"You adore me."

"I _despise _you," Jeremy says prettily. "and your family. Why would you think I like you?"

"Because you're broken, like me, and you _love _that. You _relish _in it. You like the fact that my family is more messed up than yours. You like that my brothers are gentleman and not afraid to tear everyone at this party limb from limb—actually, I think it kind of turns you on. You like that my sister is just as weak at the knees for a nice smile and kind words as yours. It's enough to make you feel normal again, right? You like me, because I am me, because you know no one would ever approve if they knew. I know you deserve that, you deserve and you _want _something bad for you. You want someone you won't care about it they seep you're your fingers and die like everyone else."

Jeremy flinches as if the words were smacks and Kol represses the urge to smile.

"Come on Jeremy," he lets his voice fall to a whisper that's like silk running over callous skin. The music blares loud around them, the people falling back to place and Mystic Falls students are darting around. "Do something for you for once."

He expected the nonverbal _yes _that came from the breaking of contact and his flighty climb of the stairwell towards the bedrooms, but he didn't expect it to feel like a _no _which would have ended in draining the vervain from his system to get his way. It felt like the chase was still on, still too much to convince, still so much to do, still so much he wanted to say.

He drowns those feelings with a glass of champagne and a wink towards Caroline, who was still running diversion with Stefan and Elena on the floor and stepping out of the way before Damon tries to intervene. Klaus is watching her and glances towards Kol—he makes a face like _hate you, don't talk, go away_—and follows Caroline towards the makeshift bar.

When the morning comes, the house is full of Jeremy's loud complaints for school and Kol's many reasons not to go. Rebekah's kicking in doors to yell at Jeremy about Matt, and Elijah's trying to clean the house. Caroline's try to make a hasty getaway from the balcony of Klaus's room with one heel on and her hair a mess, screaming to Klaus that they _did not have sex, shut up_, and winds up breaking her leg in the rose garden and spending the next few hours in Klaus's bed anyway nursing a blood bag.

Strangely, this will become normal.

* * *

_Kol, _Jeremy calls and Kol flinches because the memory is too sharp, too real and it makes him cringe. _Kol, I have to get to work. No don't compel my boss! Kol! KOL! _There's laughter and anger, just like his eyes, laughter and anger_—_all things are pleasure and pain, it came with the Gilbert name.

_Kol, _a word.

_Kol, _a word of pleasure.

_Kol, _a word of annoyance.

Faster and faster and louder and louder until its all Kol can hear, tearing through his mind with teeth and ripping it's nails through his brain.

_Kol, let me go._

_Kol, how are you?_

_Kol . . . uh, I love you, I guess?_

_Kol, I will kill you someday. _

* * *

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

With a final scream everyone in the bar lays silent—the two teens were the first to go. The bar man last. Kol drinks to his content and sleeps on the bar with his face pressed against the charcoal pages and his hands smeared with blood.

* * *

His phone buzzes half past early and hurts his ears. The hangover makes him drowsy and he's overdosed on blood again. Gah, okay, who had the toke before they came here?

He answers his phone to something like:

"S-she—I'm going to—_ohmigod._"

"Caroline, words. Actual words."

"Elena."

That's enough to get his attention.

"What about her?"

"She's killing people!"

". . ." Kol thinks back on Jeremy-logic. "We can kill her now, right?"

"_Kol_. Her and Rebekah are on a _road trip._"

Rebekah would die.

* * *

**Some more Jol, Kolremy, Keremy background. There will be more to the from here to there that takes place. A lot more family sticking their noses where they probably shouldn't and some badass days. Sorry this took so long. Summer reading, now school. Good grief. **

**P.S. Please review to let me know your reading and I do enjoy reading the reviews, they make me so very, very happy :3**

**~QueenVamp**


	4. humming your hymn

**Title| **Ink Through Water

**Genre| **hurt/comfort/angst

**Rating|** t

**Fandom| **the Vampire Diaries

**Couple| **jeremy/kol, caroline/klaus, damon/elena

**N/A: No homework, chocolate zucchini bread and library wifi-thank GOD. And thank you, all of you for your reviews, they mean so much to me and never fail to cheer me up. **

**N/A 2: Listen to Lana Del Rey's "Born To Die" it's the unofficial official anthem of this pairing. **

* * *

_"Sometimes loves is not enough  
and the road gets tough—I don't know why  
keep making me laugh  
let's go get high  
the road is long, we carry on  
try to have fun in the meantime."_

—"Born To Die" by Lana Del Rey

* * *

Kol brings his knee back before kicking out with his Italian leather shoe and sending the five or so suitcase in a wide arch out of his way and tumbling into the staircase and knocking over some priceless vase Klaus kept because he thought it was pretty.

"What the—? We're in here."

Kol follows the voices through the mansion to find Caroline and Bonnie sitting on the couch, holding delicate saucers in their hands and sipping from the priceless porcelain like ladies of the Victorian high court. He pauses in mid-step and glances at them. "What the hell is all this?" he growls and steps into the sitting room until his knees are level with the coffee table separating them—there's a full set up of exquisite painted porcelain China, with an array cakes and candies to rival any little girl's fantasy tea party.

"Kol," Bonnie says evenly and sets her cup on the saucer and that on the table with a robotic sort of elegance; Kol throws her a cheeky grin before they slide back onto Caroline who's still sipping her tea. "Sit down, please?"

"Mince your pleasantries; I don't care much for them anyway." Kol snips and leans over the table just a little. "Hello? Carooooline? Pay attention to me, sweetheart."

Caroline glances at him and sighs, setting her tea aside and clearing her throat. "Hii, Kol." She rasps and rubs her throat tenderly. Her eyes are puffy and red around the edges.

Kol cuts a glance towards Bonnie as if she were the one to blame. "What's wrong with her voice?"

Bonnie's eyebrows pluck upward but her expression stays otherwise neutral. "Elena happened. She poisoned your water supply with vervain."

"Concentrated . . ." Caroline rasps and leans back into the plush pillows of the couch, toying with the teeth sized pearls circling her slender throat idly, tapping her fingers across each individual pearl and rolling them between the digits. The skin of her throat was flushing red and the scent of blood flinted from between her teeth when she spoke, "Don't think we're leaving soon." She whispers and the fluttery white skirts of her dress flare around her like butterfly wings lying dead and unable to fly her away.

Kol frowns a little when he thinks back to the luggage piled in front of the door with their designer labels and stacks of glossy magazines balanced on top of them. _They were leaving today, _he remembers.

"Bonnie," Kol murmurs and the ex-witch's head turns like a periscope towards him with slow deliverance. "I want to know what happened, tell me."

"Not much—," she says but presses her lips together and tears gather on the surface of her eyes, glassing the doe brown, she blinks and a few scatter across her cheeks like crystals against her terra colored skin. "Uh, I got back from the island and Stefan told me—about Jeremy— and I, well, I've been dreaming about him and—"

"You've been dreaming about him?" Kol snaps slamming his hands down flat onto the surface of the coffee table and making the pretty shiny things shake like a tremor after an earthquake. Jealousy curves its thick claws into Kol's throat, building a lump and dissolving the filter of his words. "Oh, don't be so shy Bonnie tell me. Tell me your dreams about my unfortunate ex. Please, _I'm dying to know_!"

"Kol," Caroline whispers mutedly and her eyes flicker to the coffee table with eight new puncture wounds in them. Kol doesn't care, the table looked cheap anyway. What was so classy about the nineteen-twenties Tiffany settings?

Bonnie has taken on an entirely different look with harder eyes and a dour expression like the time she broke all the bones in his legs and right arm for kicks. Kol feels the phantom pain of the incident but doesn't let it deter him. He's the son of the Original witch, he _respects _and _holds high regard _for witches, but Bonnie Bennett wasn't a witch any longer. She was something of an unnatural and dangerous sort of like Klaus, not at all like Silas, something like a GMO.

Modified genetically by Shane into some time bomb of poison ticking by and ready to slaughter them all with a special kind of death. Plague of the twenty-first century.

"A few things. He wakes me up, there's a fire in my room. He's—"

"It's Silas, don't let him fool you." Kol snaps and closes his ears to everything else because he _refuses _to let the ex-witch play with him.

* * *

Klaus doesn't bother to bitch about the vase, or the luggage, or his car. His face is a sheet of white paper, austere and informal with a single cringing brow with every breath Bonnie takes of their oxygen supply. "The pipes are completely ruined," he says and glares up at the ceiling where the aforementioned banes of his existence slithered between the floorboards, best of their design. "Might need new ones."

He knows his brother well-enough to know he's probably planning the demolition and rebuilding of the entire town by this rate.

Bonnie chooses wisely not to say anything—for once, oh my God—and Caroline continues rubbing her throat and sipping at her bloody tea and glancing between him and Bonnie and Klaus to him again. Klaus acts accordingly as her boyfriend by smoothing her hair under his hand and kissing her temple, and Kol has to glace away because—fuck—Jeremy's on his mind again.

"Kol." Klaus says and gestures for his brother to follow him into his study on the other side of the house. Sound-proof walls, it's like he planned to do some form of evil plotting here. Kol needed one of these.

"The doppelgänger too much trouble, brother?" Kol's teeth curl around the words like he wanted to tear them to shreds in his mouth.

"She's of no use to me anymore." Klaus says solemnly and his fingers twist his letter opener around and around the desk in a slow clockwise motion that gouges small scratches in the glass paneling laid upon his desk; the map beneath the glass was of the world when dictators ruled the land—Klaus and Rebekah were held up in Germany and enjoying the refine upper crust of life there polishing up their modern _auf Deutsch_. Then later years, when his sister began to catch on to what was really happening—to Jews, to children, to _roma_, to homosexuals in that time—she slashed through as many officers as she could, but Klaus had the head of the Fuhrer for his own.

Even in his mummified state, his family looked out for him because they were sweet like that.

The knife was poised over a concentration camp they burned to ashes with an army of survivors.

"Death would be fitting—considering the trouble she's caused." Kol says so softly but Klaus flinches when the words untangle in his mind.

"Caroline," he says and his teeth snarl the word he usually says with such love. "And there are words in New Orleans about an uprising against me."

"So you'd let her go?" Kol sneers all snarls and sharp teeth.

"I'm choosing my battles, but if you wish to go after her—I won't stop you Kol."

* * *

Life moves on slowly, Caroline heals, Bonnie retreats back, and the Salvatore's are as good as off the radar.

Klaus leaves for New Orleans three days later with a promise to bring back something nice for Caroline—possibly a new house, or priceless whatnots—and Caroline pines by the windows with her Jane Austen novels and _Shopaholics Weekly. _Kol gives her Rebekah's credit card codes instead of Klaus's and goes about his day like any other little brother—tearing his sister's room apart.

* * *

"Kol what are you doing?" Caroline's big blue eyes narrow at him.

"Caroline, Caroline, Caroline, pretty golden Caroline." On a whim, Kol pulls up to Mystic Falls high school the Thursday before a long weekend with memories of the time Klaus daggered him in Winchester and stuffed him in Finn's custom coffin to 'economize' until he could have his own. He never did get back at him for that.

Kol smiles and greets her like a part of the family—because _hey _Mikaelson numbers are slim anyway—and wraps an arm around her waist.

"Let's go, I've got your bags in the car with all your things." Kol insists and gives the blonde a little shove towards the custom blood red and silver chrome Impala Camaro from a graceless decade. Once she's at the curb, Kol swings himself over the hood and to the driver's side and slips into the leather interior like a king on his throne.

"Why?"

"Because in light of recent events and my brother's lack of being here, I've decided you're the one I want. My love, my life. Let's elope—I hear Greece is humid all year round, let's go."

Caroline raises her brows.

"Get in the car, Caroline." Kol flings open the passenger door from his side and lowers his shades from his hair to his nose.

"Where are we going?"

"Long weekend trip," he mumbles and ignores the sting of familiarity this situation has. "Nik has work in New Orleans, you and I are going to track ourselves a doppelgänger."

"Elena?" Caroline looks unsure and her brows draw together.

"No Katherine—of course, _E-lana. _Who else do I give a damn about?"

"What are you going to do?"

"Nothing, nothing. Actually if you are busy, I could probably handle this myself. You see, Nik asked me to bring her back. No matter. See you next Tuesday—" He reaches _slowly _for the keys.

The passenger door swings open.

"Hmm, so you are coming?"

"Do you think I'm going to let you go alone?" Caroline inquires and slings her backpack into the backseat and buckles the seatbelt around her. "So, Mr. Genius, how are we tracking Elena and Rebakah? We don't even know where—" Kol produces a slim silver phone from his jacket pocket and hands it to Caroline. "What's this?"

"Rebekah's cellular, I tracked it: no dice. I tracked the credit card trail: she's paying in cash. So, I called the witch she keeps on speed dial. She's in New Orleans too, she's running recon on Klaus and should call to give me directions on our cooperates—"

_Brr-RING!_

"Now." Kol jerks the keys in the ignition and the engine turns over with a rumble. "Be a lamb and answer that?" And then tore out of the school parking lot, swerving around a bus and several clusters of freshmen. "Get out of the road!"

They salute them on their way out.

* * *

Willoughby, Pennsylvania.

Caroline changes from a dress into a pair of shorts and a blouse made of watery material. _Strumpet, _Kol snarls at her and Caroline rolls her eyes and says the bags he grabbed were for Paris. _Putain. _He spits back in perfect French and she throws something even more nasty back at him and unhooks the keys from his belt.

"I'm driving, radios mine."

* * *

They rip their way across country with two bags full of fancy clothes, half a dozen bags of blood, a Trig textbook and one working cell phone between them.

(_"I can't believe you broke your spar one too, being dramatic doesn't mean breaking your cell phone to bits every time someone calls with bad news. Klaus can order Chinese now without flipping out."_

_"You should have seen him with messenger boys with bag news." Kol says sweetly and Caroline cranks the radio to One Direction. "Ugh, how American."_

_"It's the British invasion 2.0." Caroline quips back._

_"And don't you just loooove it when we invade?"_

_"Don't say it—"_

_"Your pants."_

_"Ohmigod, shut up."_)

* * *

Kol's watching the stars from the backseat, sipping on a B positive—per Caroline's request—and listening to music to drown out Caroline's lack of taste.

The stars spread across the sky like crumbles up bits of foil tossed into the atmosphere and left levitating in midair, unsure how to come back down again. There was no moon out tonight, nor were there many street lamps on the old highway that Chloe, their witch, swore was a shortcut and the foil stars look twice as bright like in the old days before they became so diluted by the taint of the world.

They remind Kol of everything and nothing at all.

* * *

Kol brought Jeremy's last sketchbook with him, this one's half empty and picking up after the wild party at the Mikaelson house. He pulls them out of his rucksack when it rains, and Caroline drives north through the sleet and puts the top up, filling the car with heat and double chocolate mocha lattes for both of them.

He could close his eyes and feel the summer rain pouring down as he kisses Jeremy on the concrete steps and they tumble into florescent green grass and his mouth tastes like chocolate at the corners of his lips and teeth.

* * *

The sketches from then are different from the early entirely, Jeremy draws a lot of fangs now, fangs every which angle, perfect, sharp, pointed, but that one crooked tooth always makes its way into the drawings. Kol lays sleepily back against the headboard and watches Jeremy draw. "Where did you get that anyway?"

Kol actually had to think for a second.

"I was insolent—my father punched me in the mouth when it was growing in." He says and barely flinches at the memory. Klaus often exaggerates how much father hated him when then man was always cruel to nearly all of them. Everyone liked Henrik though. Henrik was his favorite hands down, no challenge. His eyes cut to Jeremy again and finds the boy's eyes to be an interesting mix of shock and concern. "Or it was probably Elijah being a prick, I can't recall."

Jeremy stiffens and goes back to drawing. "I never said anything."

He said enough.

* * *

Jeremy's angry; Kol could feel it against his ribcage—vibrating in his bones, in veins, his blood. "What's wrong?" he asks and presses his mouth to the other's throat and taste the pulsing jugular under his tongue, he moves to nip at the sweet indulgence. Jeremy hisses and presses his nails into the skin of Kol's abdomen above his belt buckle.

"You." Jeremy turns them around, nearly tripping over a stray bucket and shoving Kol back against the wall he was leaning against. Kol's hands slipped under his shirt easily, and Jeremy's body just sort of _stiffens _all at once, Kol's teeth graze the column of Jeremy's throat. "Let go!"

Kol leans back a bit, but Jeremy's still clutching him for support. There's a huge black marks blooming across his neck.

"What?"

"We're in a closet."

"Yes we are thank you for that observation, darling, you're so smart."

Jeremy ignores him. "We're in a _closet. _This cannot get anymore cliché."

The door swings open and a shocked Elena is standing in the doorway with a gaping mouth and an apprehensive Stefan standing behind her. Jeremy tries to jump back, but his foot slips and he falls back into Kol's chest. "Oh my god, are you serious!?"

"Could be worse," Kol mutters into Jeremy's ear. "Bonnie could be here."

"_Jeremy_?"

"Oh my god, just kill me now."

* * *

Kol's pacing the length of the kitchenette like a child who had just discovered the straight lines in the wood, one foot directly in front of the other slowly, counting each pace as he walked the length of the room. Rebekah seemed annoyed with the game after a while and began throwing things at him, to which Ester snaps at her to stop. Elijah just rolls his eyes and Finn serves his mother another cup of tea, trying to ignore the pinch to the rear Sage gave him with a wink.

"You are all idiots." Klaus deadpans in front of his sketch book.

"You're just upset because Caroline won't call you back." Rebekah retorts for the entire family and they all nod in agreement.

"Why do we all stand around one room?" Kol asks. "Honestly, I was here first."

"I came in here for the light." Klaus says.

"I wanted some tea." His mother says.

"Mother wanted tea." Finn says.

"Finn had to serve Ester tea." Sage says.

"This is the best place to get reception." Rebekah says.

"I don't need a reason." Elijah scoffs and steps out of the room.

_Bring. Bring. Briiiiiiiiiiiiing._

Kol dives like a cat for his phone on the table before Rebekah and catapults himself off the oak wood to the other side where Rebekah couldn't reach him.

"Very undignified." Finn mutters, rubbing his thumbs into Sage's shoulders and neck tenderly and bringing a smile to the redhead's lips.

"Good one, boyo." Sage winks at him and Kol ignores her and taps the screen of his new phone.

"Hello, you've reached the phone of Kol Mikaelson, how can you help me today?"

"My sister's lost it." Jeremy says and Kol notes that he said _my sister _not _Elena, _unlike the Mikaelson family where this is a term of endearment or reference, this is a regard of disrespect in Jeremy's tone. Annoyed, bland and troubled with his brows creasing just so and his body tense like a violin string waiting to be played just the right way.

"Oh, really? I thought she did when she was much younger." Ester coughs loudly and his eldest brother lunges to pat her back as Sage grumbles from the loss of contact. Jeremy makes a series of unintelligent noises on the other line, but still manages to sound as unimpressed with his jokes as Klaus.

"Kol."

"Alright, I'm serious now. Tell me? How bad? Be brutal, but be kind."

Jeremy sighs into the phone heavily and he turns his back to his family before he lets his expression open up. "She forbade me from ever seeing you again." Jeremy says with a sort of finality that comes with a death sentence that makes Kol's stomach twist. Like he's walking those last few steps himself and _clink clink click _goes the shackles before the warden straps him up to the electric chair and _flip _goes the switch.

Would Jeremy really stop seeing him? _Now_?

"So, no more just for you?" Kol teases lightly.

"You started this Mikaelson," Jeremy states and Kol presses the phone close, closer to his ear to try and pick up his breathing patterns and the tone underlining his voice like shadows skirting at the edge of a bed. There was something off just a kilter. "And I'm going to finish it."

Kol tries, tries, _tr—_oh fuck it, he tried to keep his voice even but it comes out haggard; twisted by his teeth and seduced by lust, curiosity sitting at the tip of his tongue and rolls out. "What do you mean?"

"Meet me at the corner—five minutes."

* * *

Of course, Jeremy never tells Kol but Caroline does on how much trouble he's in with Team Good Intentions and whatever. Elena is furious/terrified, Alaric was left in a stupor between the _I'm having sex with an Original _and _oh yeah, I'm gay _thing, the Salvatore's are livid and Bonnie doesn't know what to think. He guesses that Matt doesn't really care to have an opinion, but even so Caroline wouldn't tell him if he did.

(_"What are you doing here anyway?" Kol asks, eyes blurry and coffee mug in hand, his nose turns up at the sight of his sister laying her head dozily against the blonde's shoulder. His hands laying shyly around her shoulders and the other's hold the TV remote. _

_"Your sister had my car fixed and she wanted to learn football."_

_"Don't you mean your overly pimped version of catch?" _

_"American football." Matt says and turns back to the TV._)

Jeremy and him kept going back to each other like magnets. Meeting wherever they could, whenever, and despite the new 'rules' placed over Jeremy's human status the Sheriff and the Mayor did not seem apt to enforce laws over him. Kol made sure of that.

* * *

"Alright—okay, I think we're—" Kol's hand claps over Jeremy's mouth and pulls the Hunter against him tightly.

"You say one more word." Kol growls into his ear and Jeremy grins.

"Or what?"

Kol grins and presses his mouth against Jeremy's waiting mouth. It had been a good week—Team Goodie Good had been popping up any place Jeremy or Kol where and putting a stop to their 'shenanigans' which was most inconvenient and usually ended with Kol getting booted out wherever they were. Even his house wasn't safe anymore: Rebekah was sexually frustrated, Klaus was reaching his limit with Caroline, Elijah was just acting weird and, ugh, Finn and Sage—a few hundred years apart had done them no good. Yet, it didn't bother him that his mother was in that house.

"Jeremy . . ."

"Don't stop."

Kol pushes Jeremy beneath him onto the bed and climbs over him to press his mouth to the column of his throat, right where—

"What are you doing in my room?!" Elena near shrieks.

"Exactly what it looks like." Kol mutters and slides off him. "And now it's not."

"This would be the last place you'd look." Jeremy sits up on his elbows and glances around the room and to Kol, anywhere but Elena.

"_Jeremy,_" Elena growls and makes a motion with her hand that looks like a mother beckoning her child at the supermarket. Jeremy stays firmly at Kol's side and the two shoulder past her on the way to the door. Elena makes several grabs for Jeremy's arm and pulls him back to her. Jeremy glares at his sister and asks Kol to leave and that he'll _see him tomorrow _and Kol—pissed—pulls Jeremy against him in a fierce kiss before parting.

* * *

"Okay, you tied me down, drugged me up—this sounds like a regular afternoon for me and _another _Gilbert." Kol eyes Elena's blank face despite the general flare of pain _everywhere_. "I'm not willing to make an exception."

"Leave my brother alone." says Elena.

"You're bad for him." says Elena.

"You're messing him up." says Elena.

"Don't listen to her." says Jeremy, and his head tilts a little for Kol's mouth and allows his blood to be taken. Kol has nothing to say.

* * *

"What are you doing?" Jeremy asks his converse pad across the pavement towards him and stops short a few feet, way too far away. Kol leans up from the door of his car, grins and says, "Well, I thought I would pick you up from school."

"I've got two more classes."

"Which ones?"

"Gym and Brit. Lit."

"Great, you can skip those. We'll cover _both _when we get there." Kol wags his eyebrows and swings himself into the convertible he stole from Klaus.

"Where?" Jeremy asks, still rooted to the ground.

"You'll never know unless you go." Kol hums and drums his fingers on the wheel. "Get in,"

Jeremy does.

Kol drives them to the next town over, to an apartment arranged like a small village of top-floor and bottom-floor living spaces for separate families, built out of red bricks and iron-wrought balconies. "Who lives here?" Jeremy asks when Kol pulls up to the newer one. "Kollllllll."

"Silence is a virtue." Kol grins and pulls Jeremy along with him.

"Don't you mean patience?"

"That too."

Kol unlocks the door to the bottom floor and takes in the wood shaved smell with the flowering of fresh air, Jeremy steps in slowly after him, glancing around at the new furniture and mostly empty bookshelves. It was spacious with clean, painted walls and fresh newness. "Come on," Kol climbs the wooden staircase hugging the left wall and runs his fingers along the golden paint and zigzagging around the lower hanging sketches Kol had framed. Jeremy starts to pick up.

"Is this mine?"

"Oh, come now, don't be selfish—it's mine too." He deadpans and reaches the top floor before he turns on his heel to face Jeremy. "What do you think?"

Jeremy looks awkwardly from wall to wall. "I'm not sure whether to be happy you bought an apartment for us to sleep in, or upset because you bought an apartment for us to sleep in."

"Happy of course, no more of your cockblock sister." Kol smiles all catlike and teeth. "Now, this is two bedrooms so we'll have to choose which one we want. Unless we decided to have guests—let's not have guests. I'm right, let's just knock down the wall and have a—"

Jeremy's mouth falls against his own, hard and determined suddenly, and smoothing away with a twist of his tongue.

"Hotels are nasty anyway."

"That they are. So, where were we with your lessons?"

"Gym and Brit. Lit."

"Good thing I had the bed installed first."

They spend the long weekend at the house, Jeremy discovered new drawing materials there for him and began sketching away in his boxers and messed up hair.

Kol liked him best like that.

* * *

**There's even more flashbacks to come. Yes, I do love giving Kol nice and priceless things to smash and destroy. Have you ever seen that table? I made it up. Sorry. Not the tea set though. Klaus had that made. Bonnie's there for reasons, her and Caroline are discussing her leaving and Elena. I added the part about the concentration camp because, well, IF you knew AND you had that power WOULDN'T YOU? Also Adolf was alone when he died, sans his dead mistress, it could have happened. They burned his body outside while the Russians were coming. **

**ANYWAY, Kol's plotting hehehe and I'm rearranging the storyline a plot because why not? The fourth season was _everywhere_.**

**P.S. Please keep reviewing to let me know your reading and I do enjoy reading the reviews, they make me so very, very happy :3**

**~QueenVamp**


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